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“What rumor did you put out?” Jack asked of Jimmy. Directly below he could see the flattened kettle gleaming like a newly minted coin.
“That Jack the Coiner would appear atop the Monument at sundown and throw guineas,” Jimmy answered.
“Barking Churchyard is clear!” a
“Supply!” screamed Jack to the men below, who were gathered round an exceptionally large wagon chocked at the foot of the Monument. A patchwork of work-out sails had covered its contents until now. These were flung off to expose a huge cylindrical vat in which miles of cordage had been expertly coiled. But this was not ordinary line, of uniform thickness. That up here at the top of the Monument, ru
“Righto,” Jack said, and caught the eye of the Indian. “And so ’twould seem that very soon I shall require the Chariot of Phaethon. And another for His Reverence.”
His Reverence let it be known that he was amused. The Indian heaved a sigh and shambled through the door to begin the long journey down stairs.
“What are you snickering at?” Jack demanded, making a semicircular excursion round the column to discover Father Edouard de Gex. The Jesuit had, for lack of a better word, cornered the four Jewish tourists at the southwestern vertex of the platform. At his feet rested a black strong-box. The lid was open. Diverse gnarled keys and hand-hammered padlocks littered the deck all round. He had mostly emptied the casket by this point, but some of its contents could still be seen: it had been full of small leathern bags, each bag filled with something of High Specific Gravity that clinked as de Gex transferred them one by one into a stout ox-hide satchel. A second satchel, already full, sat next to the one he was packing.
“You lay a curse on yourself without knowing it,” de Gex answered. “You should call it the Chariot of Apollo.”
“Apollo is the sobriquet of Leroy-I was trying to show deference.”
“All right, Helios then. Never Phaethon.”
“Half the young blades in town are rattling about in Phaethons,” Jack returned, “why can’t I fly above London in one?”
“Phaethon was a sort of bastard son of Helios. He borrowed his papa’s gleaming Vehicle and went for a heavenly Drive. But seeing the great height to which he had ascended, and terrified by the Heroes, Legends, and Titans hung in the sky by the Gods as Constellations, he lost his wits; the chariot ran out of control, scorching the earth; Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt and he crashed into a river. So when you refer to your conveyance as the Chariot of Phaethon-”
“The import of your Tale is not lost on me,” Jack let it be known, watching de Gex transfer the last of the clinking bags into the satchel. Then, in a different tone, he reflected: “It is curious. I always phant’sied that the rites of the ancient Pagans, prosecuted as they were in airy temples by naked maidens and prancing butt-boys, and enlivened by feasts and orgies, must have been infinitely more diverting than the insufferable ceremonies of Christians; yet the dramatick yarn of this Phaethon, intoned by Your Reverence, is as dry, tedious, and didactic as the litanies of the Baptists.”
“I am speaking to you, Jack, of your pride, of your ignorance, and of your doom. I am sorry that I can not make it any more festive.”
“When night fell, who rode the moon-chariot?”
“Selene. But that was of silver.”
“If those layabouts on the barge do not spin that wheel any faster, we shall be compared to her.”
“The twilight will linger for a while yet,” de Gex predicted.
Jack went to inspect the rope coming up from below, and passing over the pulley and out into the air above London en route to the said barge. He was surprised to find that it had already waxed to the thickness of his finger. Surprised, and a bit dismayed, for he’d been hoping that it would snag on a weathercock somewhere and snap while it was still slender and fragile. But now that it had achieved such a thickness it was unlikely to break. He would actually have to do this thing.
Some minutes passed. London as always continued in roiling feverish busy-ness: the Mobb around the base of the Monument, swollen to a thousand, chanting for their promised guineas, here parting to make room for a mad dog, there clumping to assault a pick-pocket. The fire brigades at their pumping-engines in the Tower hamlets and now in Mincing Lane, surrounded by more of the Mobility, protected by cordons of lobsterbacks. The Highlanders atop the White Tower, victorious but somehow forlorn, as no one seemed to have noticed what they’d accomplished. The men on the barge spi
Phaethon himself was just in the act of crash-landing on the upper Thames, some leagues to the west of town. With any luck he’d set fire to Windsor Castle on his way down. The radiance of his final approach sprayed flat across London and made the whole city jagged and golden. Jack looked at it all, most carefully, as he had once looked out over Cairo, and indeed the place suddenly looked as queer and as outlandish to him as Cairo once had. Which was to say that he saw all through a traveler’s dewy eye, and perceived all that was overlooked by the Cockney’s brass-tacks stare. He owed it to Jimmy and Da
“Dad,” Jimmy was saying, “it’s time, Dad.”
He looked over. The rope was as thick as his wrist now, and it no longer moved; it had been tied off down below, the plinth of the Monument pressed into service as a bitt. Half a mile distant, out in the river, the barge had chopped its anchor-cable, and flung great bags of heavy fabric-sea-anchors-into the river. The flow of the Thames had inflated them. They pulled the barge downstream with immense force, exerting tension on the full length of the rope that could be sensed from here-for the rigging that bound the great pulley to the top of the Monument had now begun to groan and tick like that of a ship that has been struck by a blast of wind. Riding on that taut hawser, now, above their heads, was a traveling block: that is to say a grooved pulley spi